Skip to main content

GOD IN THE LAB - SAT 21ST MARCH


Description: A day with some of the world’s leading scientific researchers into faith, many from Oxford University.

£10 or £5 students.

We’ll be looking at hearing voices, possession, etc. What goes on the brain of someone hearing voices? Come and see the MRI scans. Is religious belief hard-wired into us? Yes, says one speaker, and provides the empirical evidence.

One of our scientists was recently featured in NEW SCIENTIST magazine. A unique opportunity to hear and question those working at the cutting edge of this growing field of scientific research.

Organized by Stephen Law, CFI UK Provost.

Location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL (close to Holborn tube).

To book, send a cheque payable to “Centre for Inquiry London” to: Executive Director Suresh Lalvani, Centre for Inquiry London, at the above address (Include names of all those coming). Alternatively use the “Support CFI UK” button at www.cfiuk.org and follow the instructions (credit and debit cards). £10 or £5 students.

Start Time: 10:30 (for 11am). End Time: 16:00

Comments

It kills me that all these great events are half a world away. Am I wrong to assume that London is the world center for secular humanismj and skepticism?
Stephen Law said…
I have no idea, to be honest. Isn't there stuff like this going on in US?
The Center for Inquiry is based in Amherst, New York and they are fairly active. However, I live in a red neck bible thumping hick town in southwestern Ontario. Let's just say that I would not have been strolling through the House of Commons in Ottawa last week with my local Member of Parliament if he had any idea about my skeptic/atheist leanings.

My 5 hour drive to see Richard Dawkins last week in East Lansing, MI was well worth the trip. It was a much more mundane affair than his lively appearance at the University of Oklahoma. Check that out on youtube if you get the chance.

Thanks for keeping your site updated. It's great.

Popular posts from this blog

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen

Aquinas on homosexuality

Thought I would try a bit of a draft out on the blog, for feedback. All comments gratefully received. No doubt I've got at least some details wrong re the Catholic Church's position... AQUINAS AND SEXUAL ETHICS Aquinas’s thinking remains hugely influential within the Catholic Church. In particular, his ideas concerning sexual ethics still heavily shape Church teaching. It is on these ideas that we focus here. In particular, I will look at Aquinas’s justification for morally condemning homosexual acts. When homosexuality is judged to be morally wrong, the justification offered is often that homosexuality is, in some sense, “unnatural”. Aquinas develops a sophisticated version of this sort of argument. The roots of the argument lie in thinking of Aristotle, whom Aquinas believes to be scientifically authoritative. Indeed, one of Aquinas’s over-arching aims was to show how Aristotle’s philosophical system is broadly compatible with Christian thought. I begin with a sketch of Arist

The Evil God Challenge and the "classical" theist's response

On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se